Dear Friends,
Another active week for Waterways Watch. We had five assembly talks in total: two for Tanjong Katong Primary School (1500 students), one for Yishun Town Secondary School (1100 students), one for Westwood Secondary School (1100 students) and one for Hougang Secondary School (300 students). Out of these five assembly talks, two were sponsored by Singapore Press Holdings Limited, one was sponsored by North West Community Development Council (NWCDC) and one was sponsored by Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) respectively. We also set up three booths for Earth Week at Kuo Chuan Presby. Secondary School, Sengkang Primary School and Shuqun Primary School.
We conducted two Kayak Waterway Clean-up programmes for Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) with 52 and 55 participants respectively, one for Ministry of Finance with 17 participants and one for National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVCP) with 40 participants. There was one CSR program for American Express with 75 participants doing Kayak Waterway Clean-up, Pedal Boat Waterway Clean-up, Bicycle Waterway clean-up and Foot Waterway Clean-up. Additionally, a small group of four publics did pedal boat on Saturday at the request of one of our member. At Punggol Office, we did a talk to 25 MOE Principal and Vice-Principal under CLC.
The total week’s engagement was over 4,150 students and 140 adults plus around 500 visitors at our three booth events. Wonderful achievement to the Team. This was besides having two last minute postponement by Evergreen Primary School (same morning notice of cancellation) as teacher forgot it was their Founders Day (quite disappointing).
During the weekend, 7 member did night patrol and for weekend patrol 15.Garden crew came down for the weekend. Four members from Punggol Branch did two weekday patrols and some preliminary work done at Jurong Lake Branch by the Jurong team with four members involved.
This weekend, CEO attended the opening of Lakeside Gardens (Jurong) at the invite of NParks however our branch was not ready for operation. We hope to be able to be operational by June 2019, pending office availability. In addition, WWS was invited to Keep Clean Singapore (KCS) 2019 Launch Event and offered token of appreciation by NEA. For the week, we collected a total of 132.22 Kg of litter. Night patrol engaged over six litter offences (all relating to cigarette butts) and one was fined because he was arrogant and refused to pick-up. Challenged our officer to fine even and said “only S$300”. Report will be submitted to NEA. No illegal fishing was sighted this weekend. CEO attended two meetings this week- OBS and PUB.
This month, we received a total of 7 new member applications.